In recent years, flexible electronic devices have been drawing attention, in each of which functional layers such as finely-patterned interconnections are formed on a flexible base material such as a film. Examples of such flexible electronic devices include a thin-film transistor (hereinafter, referred to as a TFT in this description). For the manufacturing of these flexible electronic devices, photolithography has heretofore been employed which is capable of forming finely-patterned interconnections. However, electronic-device manufacturing methods using photolithography require time- and effort-consuming processes such as preparing a high-temperature vacuum environment, and therefore take many manufacturing man-hours and high manufacturing cost. For this reason, a flexible-electronic-device manufacturing method as an alternative for photolithography has been desired.
As an electronic-device manufacturing method as an alternative for photolithography, there has been printed electronics (hereinafter, referred to as PE in this description), for example. The manufacturing of a flexible electronic device employing PE involves forming finely-patterned interconnections onto a flexible base material by a printing method or a coating applying method to make a flexible electronic device. As compared to the manufacturing of a flexible electronic device employing photolithography, this method does not require time- and effort-consuming processes and can therefore reduce the manufacturing man-hours and also greatly lower the manufacturing cost.